Musk's xAI loses court bid to block Minnesota’s strict Deepfake pornography ban

 

Elon Musk’s xAI has suffered a major legal setback in federal court, failing in its bid to halt a landmark state law cracking down on generative AI-driven deepfakes.

In a latest update federal judge has officially denied xAI’s motion for a preliminary injunction, allowing Minnesota to move forward with enforcing its landmark law targeting generative AI tools capable of creating non-consensual deepfake pornography.

Minnesota's legislation (House File 1606) stands as a first-of-its-kind state statute. It penalizes platforms and creators of AI tools built or marketed to digitally undress individuals or generate explicit, non-consensual deepfake imagery, empowering the state Attorney General to levy steep penalties up to $500,000 per violation.

Lawyers for Elon Musk's xAI filed suit against Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, arguing that the statute is overly broad, infringes upon First Amendment protections for protected speech, satire, and creative expression, and places an unfair liability burden on platform developers rather than solely prosecuting bad-actor users.

The court rejected xAI's bid to block the statute, concluding that the state has a compelling interest in curbing the severe harms, privacy violations, and dignity loss associated with non-consensual sexual deepfakes.

The ruling marks a major legal hurdle for generative AI developers facing mounting state and federal scrutiny over lax guardrails on image-generation features like Grok Imagine.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, called the state's law "overwhelmingly bipartisan and nearly unanimously approved" by state lawmakers.

"These nudification apps have been used to generate child sexual abuse materials and harass people in the vilest ways imaginable," Ellison said in a statement on Friday. "That repulsive behavior is not welcome in Minnesota."

The judge earlier turned down Musk's bid in July to stop the law from taking effect but agreed to fast-track his review of the measure.

Additionally, Musk’s Grok AI chatbot has faced criticism over its creation of sexually explicit content. Regulators have sought stronger safeguards and imposed bans to help curb the spread of artificially created illegal material.

Minnesota's first-in-the-nation ban on AI-generated fake nude images will remain in effect as a constitutional ​challenge by Elon Musk's xAI proceeds, after a federal judge on Friday ‌declined to block the law at an early stage of the case.

Musk's xAI company argues the measure restricts free speech protected by the U.S. Constitution, while Minnesota says the law is ​narrowly tailored to curb the spread of nonconsensual sexual imagery created with ​artificial intelligence (AI).